


anti-lullaby

by spicanao



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Blood and Violence, Canonical Character Death, DRK 50-60, Dark Knight Questline (Final Fantasy XIV) Spoilers, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Nightmares, Sibling dynamic (Fray & Sid), Trauma, Zine: Musica Universalis: A Music-Themed Final Fantasy XIV Fanzine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:20:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29845554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicanao/pseuds/spicanao
Summary: Long after everything is said and done, Sidurgu finds his voice.
Relationships: Fray Myste & Sidurgu Orl, Rielle de Caulignont & Fray Myste, Rielle de Caulignont & Sidurgu Orl
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	anti-lullaby

**Author's Note:**

> My piece for the FFXIV Musica Universalis zine. This one was really fun to write and it was a joy being a part of such a fun project!

_ Listen. _

_ He sees her in his mind’s eye, the deep vermillion of her woolen sleeve fluttering in the to and fro motion of her arms. “Listen, Sidurgu,” his mother urges, and he leans forward in his father’s lap, watching her fingers dance over the fraying fibers of the morin khuur. The stringed instrument echoes a timbring tune, deep and low and resonant. When he closes his eyes, he can feel its hum within his ribcage, warm and filling. _

_ “This, I will teach you,” she murmurs, pulling the bow against the instrument in exaggerated motions, wheedling whiny noises from its strings. “I will teach you when we reach our new home. But for now, listen.” _

_ She opens her mouth, taking a deep breath— _

_ But it isn’t that gentle voice that comes out. It is frantic, pleading, trembling in the same crying notes of the morin khuur. A desperate “Look away. Please,” murmured as great steel meets flesh and severs bone from bone. A temple knight staggering before he can reach Sidurgu, then cold, gloved fingers heaving the Au Ri boy from the carnage of his family’s bodies. _

_ Don’t listen. _

He opens his eyes, blinking through the window’s filtered moonlight as the final images of the nightmare melt away. Sidurgu Orl remembers the sound of death clearly—so vividly he can still feel the vibrations of the sword cutting through the air and the tremors that danced in his heart as a child. Yet after so many years—so many frigid winters past—he closes his eyes and tries to remember the sound of that song, to untangle what little warmth his childhood bore before it was wrested from his arms.

“Sid?”

He glances up. Across the room, Rielle emerges from moth-eaten bedcovers—the Forgotten Knight’s specialty—and raises one small fist to swipe at the corners of her eyes. “You’re up too early,” Sidurgu manages, clearing his throat, but the young Elezen girl squints her eyes into a look that tells him she senses something amiss. “Go back to sleep, Rielle. Unless you’re expecting me to carry you to Gridania in the morning.”

She frowns, casting him a half-scandalized, half-frustrated look. “I wish you wouldn’t do that. You’re acting like you used to  _ before. _ When—” She pauses, allowing the beat of silence to stretch on until it’s clear that she won’t finish. Then, she shakes her head and folds her arms across her chest. “I dreamed about  _ her _ again.”

_ Mother  _ comes unspoken, but understood just as clearly. How alike of them, plagued by the same phantom figures, and yet not so alike at all.

Rielle is a strong girl, far from faint-hearted or frail—but sometimes he forgets how young she truly is, and how she’s seen things young eyes shouldn’t have to see, things  _ he’d  _ seen that steeled and struck him all the same. He clenches his jaw and pushes against the wall he’d claimed as his sleeping perch, rising to his feet. One step, two—the staccato thumps of his footfalls fill the silent room as he pads towards the bed. Rielle follows his movement blearily, pale green eyes glinting beneath the misty moonlight, then widening when he takes a seat beside her, the mattress dipping beneath his weight.

“Go back to bed,” he murmurs.

“I still hear her voice.”

For a moment, he remembers his own mother’s voice—but the memory swirls in his mind into a distorted image. The dark knight opens his mouth, searching for comforting words, but no sound comes out. He leans back against the creaky bed frame and doesn’t look at the young girl at his side, but knows she is watching him. For a moment—just for a moment—Sidurgu Orl feels small again. Rattled. And lost, but this is no different than usual.

Fray would know what to do, he thinks.

Fray had always seemed to know what was best. When Ompagne had pried Sidurgu from death’s maws, it was Fray who tempered the fever of his mind, Fray who was the mature sibling to his childish ways, even if Sidurgu was the older one. It was Fray who, voice clear and unwavering against the Brume chill, thrust Rielle into his arms and marched off to their Halonic executioner.

How many moons had it been since he’d heard their voice?

Many. And yet it feels like yesterday in the way dreams cling to the mind and disperse at any moment.

Nights in the Brume bring a cold that seeps deeper than skin and embeds into the bone. He remembers it was cold that day, too, that last time it was just two of them on the streets. Sidurgu had felt the chill strongly beneath his armor, but the plated metal did its job of warding off most of it. Before him, Fray slipped their helmet over their head for what had felt like the first time in years, hair mussed from sweat and clinging to their forehead. They painted a rather jarring image, looking wistfully heavensward despite the blood dripping off the jagged ends of their armor—a rusty red not their own, but of the knight templar who’d dared to take more than he was permitted. Someone who’d taken something precious from them, supposedly.

Over their heads, the tonal hymns of a Halonic choir and raucous laughter of celebrating knights drifted into the streets. It was the cusp of the Starlight Festival — even the still-smoldering pillars of the Brume had been decorated with sprigs of holly. Despite it all, he saw it for the farce it was. Come morning, the children would still be hungry, the temple knights vigilant on their prowl for unsuspecting victims.

Yet it still sounded merry.

But Fray seemed anxious that night. “I tire of this wailing,” they said, then reached upward to swing onto a ledge. Their citrine eyes burned through the darkness of the night. Sensing his eyes on them, they glanced over and crooked a corner of their lips upward. “Sing us a song, Sid. Show the gobshited frauds how a  _ real  _ tune should carry.”

A disgruntled noise had left the Au Ra’s throat as he crossed his arms. “Why don’t  _ you  _ sing a damn song if you’re so bothered?”

“You’re the older one.” He practically heard the sardonic grin in their voice, but something  _ different  _ lingered, hollow and on-edge. Their gloved hands furled and unfurled in their lap, as if releasing tension. “Go on. Didn’t old man Ompagne teach you a shanty? A lullaby? You must have something in that scaly brain.” Then a thoughtful sound dipped into their tone as the choir’s notes faded into the Pillars. “The quiet’s too harsh against the ears, now. Any old song is fine, Sid.”

Sidurgu opened his mouth, then faltered, shrinking beneath the other’s insistent watch. A familiar tune had danced on the edges of his mind, but the words—sung in a language nearly foreign to him now—tangled in his throat. “I couldn’t even if I tried.” More to himself, he muttered, “Can’t even say the words.”

Fray laughed, an earthy rumble filling the quiet Brume air. They stretched across their perch, legs hanging precariously over the edge. “What does it matter, the words? It’s not as if you’ve forgotten the sound entirely. Nor the sense of it. Go on, then.”

Sidurgu frowned, but still the other dark knight kept their gaze trained towards the night sky. He felt small beside Fray, who all at once seemed far away yet closer than ever. “What’s even the point?”

"Anything to fill this damned silence." They shifted, then, bright eyes fixed on him. “Sidurgu. What we do. What we see. You learn to hold on to the things you do have, while they’re still in your hands—and even when they aren’t anymore.”

And when Sidurgu said nothing, uncomprehending, Fray sighed, bloodied fingers rattling against the conjurer’s cane tucked against their greatsword. “Then just listen,” they uttered—and sang. It was like an ode to outsiders, to non-belongers, the way their voice seemed to rasp and crack in their throat, all things tired and begrudging and lonely ringing out as listless hum for stragglers to hear. 

They had glanced at him, then, and Sidurgu didn’t understand what it was they sang for. For those who were lost? For those who could not be saved? Or for an ache that could never fully leave them? “The voice calls too strongly tonight,” was all they said.

And then Fray was gone, like the rest of them.

But here, with Rielle, he can understand it just a little.

Rielle leans back, pressing her weight against the crook of his arm. “Is this okay?” she asks, slowly, and while Sidurgu says nothing, he carefully curves his palm over the back of her head to ease her away from his tougher scales, but leaves her there nonetheless. When she stares listlessly at the ceiling, he clears his throat and draws from memories he’d locked behind shutters. Of tinny sounds on a handcrafted horse fiddle, echoing a childhood tune. And where his mother’s voice was, he fills the gaps with his own—an awkward, wordless affair, all vague noises and guessed sounds. But Rielle relaxes against him and he finds a little peace in it. Quells the aching cry of the voice in his own abyss.

“I don’t want to sleep,” Rielle says, and he knows the feeling. It echoes in his bones, fills the hollow cavity of his chest. 

“It’s okay. Just listen.”

And maybe it’s enough—to chase the dreams away and watch over the night. So he lets the song buzz in his throat and drums his fingers over Rielle’s head in phantom movements rehearsed from memory, until the sound of his own voice drowns out the one he hears in his heart.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! you can also find me on twitter @nyoomiq :)


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